Piano Fingers
by Poncey of the Lions
Summary: Ladies and gentlemen, may we present to you Claudia Vaudeville. Miss Vaudeville, an almost-mute, holds a deep and separate secret, a secret that she cannot admit to herself. And this secret is going to plunge her deep into the Twilight Zone.
1. Up Next On The Twilight Zone

**AN: Hello, everyone! I have watched Twilight Zone for a long time. I really wanted to write a fanfic for it, and this is the result. This was spanned from boredom in the hours of the night. I wrote it in my head, and then put it down on paper later, so it's not as good as it could have been. Still, I like it all the same. Does anyone think I should continue this?? An answer would be helpful. But I am procrastinating as of current, so I'm not sure how long it will take to post the next chapter. I'm not very good with quotations, don't kill me over that. I don't mean to offend Rod Serling in any way with my deeply dreary descriptions. But he did smoke like a chimney.**

**Dedicated to my dad, who was awesome enough to turn on the TV some melancholy Saturday and propose that we watch "Five Characters in Search of an Exit." Thanks, dad. I've never been the same since.**

**Also dedicated to Emily-chan, Shadowrosedragon to you, for her supreme awesomeness, cool advice, and love of Yusei Fudo.**

**And lastly, this is dedicated to anyone who severely annoyed with my really long answering machine message whose final statement is "the Twilight Phone." And no, mom, I'm not going to change it just yet.**

**~The author, Poncey. Enjoy!**

Once upon a time is quite a cliché to begin a story with, but then again that is where all stories begin. Somewhere, on a certain year within one of twelve months, there is the day. And it is on that day, upon the hour, the minute, the very second- that is when the story begins. Two-thousand-plus documented years and the millions before it contain one moment plucked like a feather from all the others, one single span of infinitesimal seconds that will, undoubtedly, change the course of history as we know it.

There is only one chance. It could happen now, it could happen later. But somewhere within the space of time, a door will appear. This door is not opened by normal means. It is unlocked by the key of imagination, a portal to another world where physics and laws don't apply and the impossible is lived every day as a reality. It is a world which we call…

* * *

The room coated itself in gray. Paint companies would try and tell you it was some sort of fancy color with some fancy name like arsenic or slate, but to anyone who looked at the walls, the color was a simple and melancholy gray. Bits and pieces in the corners started to peel and twist down the sides in ribbons. The scent of decaying newspapers, dissipating ink, and wood smoke clutched the air. The room was cloaked in shadow that hid the furniture from sight, the outlines of a wooden chair and a simple table barely visible in the blackness. All was as it should be, as it always had been.

That was when a voice, arid and dry, gave a droll monotone of, "And now, Mr. Serling."

Silence lasted for perhaps a second, and then a sharp fizzing crackle let the spotlight illuminate the room's occupant.

A man was standing in front of the table. His ebony hair plastered itself to his head with gel, not a single strand out of place. Hair like that was a rarity now, a thing only seen in the babbles of old television. His dark eyes shattered the gloom and stared into the distance, twinkling slightly. A cigarette dangled from the corner of the man's mouth. When he talked, it managed to keep itself there, twitching every now and then from the edges of his lips. Smoke gathered in a cloud about his head, and the shine from the cigarette's lit tip cast an eerie light about his face. When he breathed out to speak, a ring of smoky cloud encircled him and then floated to the ceiling where it dissolved into the stale air.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he annunciated in a manner that was both happy and business-like. He clapped his hands together across his chest. His head seemed to nod constantly as he spoke. "for our next broadcast…"

Mr. Rod Serling was just as gray as the room in which he resided. The color seemed to wash over him and meld with his every pore. It didn't help that he smoked more than a chimney, what with the vapors of nicotine and tobacco constantly in a buzz around his head. Even his suit was a dark shade of gray, a drab and commonplace suit that held no color whatsoever. The only things alluring about him were his eyes that caught glimpses of everything and his voice that rang with life gained only from many terrible experiences.

"…may we present to you Miss Claudia Vaudeville."

Another crack, hiss, and whir, and a bright beam threw its ghostly murk upon the room's other inhabitant. A young girl sat in the only chair, slumped shadow twisted and mangled behind her. Her gaze was glazed over from behind thick-framed spectacles, her mind wandering somewhere far away.

"Miss Vaudeville, an almost-mute, holds a deep and separate secret, a secret that she cannot admit to herself."

The gray had not yet touched the girl. She stood out from the room and the man, highlighted by the halo of a spotlight that ensnared her. She glowed with her own sort of shine, something that the gray avoided and left well enough alone. She held an ominous color about her person, a color saturated with a glow that young children would call magical.

The girl did not speak. She pretended to ignore the man, or it could be noticed that she may have had no idea that there was even a man there to begin with. She stared down at her worn, dirty sneakers, chapped lips in a thin line.

There was something odd about her hands. Her fingers rested on her knees, constantly tapping the same rhythmic pattern. Sometimes, they would float out to tap the air, curling and twisting. They never stopped. They flew like the wings of a butterfly: to her knees, to the air, to her knees, to the air. She was so absorbed in what she was tapping she looked as if breathing was her second priority.

"That secret being, not only can she play the piano better than the composers who wrote them after only three tries…"

Claudia continued to strike the notes of an invisible piano across her legs. A leather cord tied loosely around her wrist jangled as she played soundlessly, threatening to fall off. Spikes of crimson hair curled down her back to her shoulder blades, loose strands cascading about her body. Long bangs hid her dark pencil eyebrows and almost obscured her shady green eyes. The fabric of her voluminously baggy red t-shirt threatened to swallow her whole, sickly thin arms even more prominent in the garb. Her fingertips skirted across the knees of her blue jeans, the edges of which had slowly begun to fray.

"…but this talent will also give her a secret love with a fellow piano player, who's sudden disappearance will lead her on a desperate journey that will ultimately end in the dark and desolate reaches of…"

The girl didn't even notice that her glasses were falling down her face. She didn't even try to push them up. Eventually, the slid to the bridge of her freckled nose, and then plummeted into her lap with a thump, reflections off the lenses sending crystalline glimmers around the walls. Only then did she stop her incessant playing to put them back upon her nose. And as soon as that was done, she began to play the music again faster than ever.

Claudia seemed to sense the beginning of something large. As Serling started to finish his sentence, her fingers hesitated in their notes. For the first time since she took her seat, she glanced up from the tangle of her hands to stare at the narrator. She didn't know what was coming, but she reasoned that what was about to begin was far greater than she could ever imagine.

"…the Twilight Zone."

Serling walked over, flung open the door and left, the clack of his dress shoes echoing across the corridor.

Then everything faded back to its state of frozen nighttime, plunging Claudia into the darkest pits of nightmares, flinging her upon her journey.


	2. Prelude: Prima Donna and Primo Uomo

**AN: First of all, lemme say, I am having the worst bout of procrastination I have ever had in my whole life. It's painful. I've been depressed in my writing, nothing seemed to click together, etc. I will get over it someday, but for now, it's very bad. OKAY! Before anyone kills me over this chapter's title making no sense, I do not mean prima donna as in the ****vain****, obnoxious and temperamental twit that everyone hates and no one can live without. I simply mean prima donna as in, lit. first lady, and less literally leading female role. And in case anyone was unsure, primo uomo is the exact same term of leading role, but it applies to the male lead. **

**I think that this will probably take a really long time to get going to the weirdness, but if you keep up with me for quite a while, it'll come eventually. Thanks for reading!**

The surface of his desk was brand new. It glistened in the crummy fluorescents and reeked of cleaning products. No defect was to be found upon it save the small notch in the corner, barely noticeable anyway. The inside was clean and open, without debris. Adrian sat in the front of the classroom, hand popping up mechanically and prepared to answer any question thrown at him. In between responding, he wrote voluminous notes with a steady hand, ballpoint pen denting through the paper and leaving imprints on the other side. He was a transfer student, newer to this school than the autumn leaves outside, but obviously smarter than anyone in the room.

The desk that she sat in had held many years of abuse. Scars done by pencil, ink, and marker marred its surface. The chair squeaked when shoved back and a loose set of bolts barely held the frozen blue plastic to the metal. The inside was littered with trash- bits of paper, candy wrappers, empty chip bags, and the last remnants of pre-chewed gum and spilled soda pop. Claudia sat in the back, eyes down on her notebook where she was absentmindedly pretending to scratch down notes, although in reality her mind was very far away. She did not answer any question and did not look up from her paper. She kept conscious of what the teacher was uttering, if only slightly. Which was why, for the first time all day, she peered up from her paper, trying to register what the teacher had just declared.

"Today, you are getting a partner assignment. You will draw slips of paper and when you have your partner, you will choose a topic involving a specific theme in history and create an exhibit about that theme. It's very broad, so be sure to have fun with it!"

Claudia hated group projects. She hated projects. No, as a matter of fact she hated speaking, which she would have to do in order to create a project that she hated. For a fleeting moment, she felt sorry for the poor kid that had to work with her. But it faded and she more or less began to feel sorry for herself.

The teacher walked behind her desk and pulled out the object of doom: a black, faded, and moth-eaten top hat. Grinning like an imp, Mrs. Beaumont placed the hat on the corner desk. The student pulled out a small slip. "Eleven," the kid read.

"Alright," the teacher announced. "I'm going to keep passing these around. Whoever gets eleven is partnered with James. Make any sense?"

Everyone nodded except for Claudia.

And so, the drawing began. Students in the front were calling out their numbers as they drew, shouting choruses of "Six!" "Seven!" and "Two!" while the people in the back drew their slips of paper and scratched their heads as they searched for their partners.

Claudia, shoved in the back corner, was the last to draw. With annoyed fingers, she pulled out a scrap of paper. It was soft under the touch, tattered and crinkled. The index card it was printed on was very old and yellowing in the corners. The ink displayed the number seven, curly and lopsided, scrawled without care into a triangle missing partials of a side. The ink had begun to fade, navy shade turning to sky. She wondered how a school could be so cheap that it didn't even have the energy to make fresh slips of paper.

"Seven," she muttered without even looking up.

A voice up in the front called cheerfully, "I'm seven!" The clomp of footsteps told her there was someone coming towards her. "You're with me," the boy said. Claudia glanced up from her notebook to discover that the transfer student stood in front of her. She nodded, and they moved to find an open spot to work in.

"So," the boy asked after he had chosen an empty place and the two had been sitting in silence for several minutes. "What kind of stuff are you into? I'm open to work with anything you like. Oh," he realized that he had forgotten something. "I'm Adrian, by the way." He extended a hand which she casually glanced at but didn't take. "You must be Claudia." He waited, and getting no response, he sighed.

"You sure are awfully quiet." Again, no response.

He leaned a bit closer to her, observing the way she kept her head down. Then he lowered himself even further, so that he was staring into her face. He smiled in a flash of ivory teeth. "You know if you don't mind me sayin', you have very beautiful eyes."

She felt herself blush. "What?" She pulled herself out of her comatose state to glance into two pools of ocean-irises.

He laughed. "And so she speaks. Your eyes," he repeated. "They're very pretty."

She tried to say something, and faltered. _People are so odd_, she thought to herself. _Very, very odd. Who goes around saying things like that, just out of the blue without any thought to it or relevance? And why, of all people in this classroom, would he choose to compliment _my_ eyes? Strange._

He was saying something but she wasn't listening.

"Huh?"

"I said," he reiterated. "Do you like music? We could do our project on music."

"Oh..." She had never thought about music much. "I guess..."

"You… guess so?" His brows furrowed. "How do you not? Music is wonderful."

"Well…" her voice trailed off. She decided to avoid the subject. "We can do the project on music."

Adrian laughed. "Alright, now we're getting somewhere! You like the classical era?"

She nodded although she didn't really care. Until he started telling her about classical music. Across from her, the boy was beaming. He looked practically delirious with happiness. He nearly babbled, telling her about some of the famous composers, and the styles and other stuff that she found herself actually paying attention to. The way he spoke held her and made her feel like she was right there beside the men blotting ink onto paper with their feather quills.

She didn't have anything to say. She merely listened, afraid that if she talked his spell would break. She didn't want that to happen. She leaned back against the wall and took in all the words the boy said. She held onto each and every one like it was the end of the world. For once in her life, she was learning something real and true and whole. And she enjoyed learning it. For once in her life, she had found her passion. She had found something that was not absentminded scribbles and doodles on the pages of textbooks. Through this kid, she had found substance, something she could hold on to. Goodness knows, she'd needed it.

Mr. Rod Serling sat in the back of the room, invisible to anyone. He smiled as the youths did their work and the teacher watched happily. He sighed. Life was such a terrible thing to waste.

He straightened up, and spread his arms. He began to cast an enchantment that could never be broken. No one in this room would hear him, no one but himself. He didn't mind it. It had never occurred to him that the people that he was observing were real or that the things he was saying would actually happen to anyone. The things that he saw could have been a television screen. He wouldn't ever know that behind the screen there were people, and each life had a soul with a purpose. He would never know, simply because the higher power that controlled him wished it that way.

_For most people, school is a place to learn, to study, to branch out and find new ideas. Up until know, Claudia Vaudeville never really followed that. But today, she will meet a boy who will change that for her. A boy who's love of music will lead her to find a piano. And this is a piano that was inevitably built in the Twilight Zone._


End file.
